Once A Grand Duke by Alexander Grand Duke of Russia. Alexander Mikhailovich
with “Cousin Nicky.” Nothing could have altered in my mind the image of the cheerful boy in a little pink shirt, who stood on the marble steps of the long stairs in Livadia pointing at the sailing ships on the horizon and squinting his dreamy, curiously shaped eyes at the sunset. . . . I married his sister Xenia nineteen years later.
Now I was entering upon the tenth year of my life and the third year of my learning, which meant that a new set of studies and military exercises would be added to my duties.
Brought up amongst the grown-ups and hearing so much talk of the heavy responsibilities facing a grand duke, I was already pondering over problems which are usually reserved for a more mature age. Strange to say, my emotional, spiritual and intellectual development had preceded my sexual awakening by several years. Not until 1882, when my parents moved definitely to St. Petersburg, where I commenced to attend the ballet performances, did that troublesome restlessness make itself felt. Up to that time, possibly as a result of severe discipline, I had remained pure, both in desire and in thought. The study of the Old Testament, so likely to affect a child’s imagination, impressed me from an entirely different angle. Utterly unconscious of its sexual significance, I worried over the legal aspects of the Adam and Eve episode. I thought it extremely unjust on the part of God to banish these two innocent people from Paradise. In the first place, God could have ordered Satan to let them alone; and in the second place, why did He create the perfidious fruit that caused humanity so much suffering?
Father Titoff, slightly suspicious of me since the day of my first confession, had tried in vain to plead the cause of the Old Testament. He let me go on for a while, praying for the salvation of my soul from the abyss of disbelief, but finally lost patience and threatened to report me to my father. This unanswerable argument killed my interest in his lessons, and I turned my battery of questions against the teachers of geography and natural history.
Like most Russian boys, I contemplated the possibility of running away to America, and learned the names of all the states, principal cities and rivers in the United States. I never gave a moment of peace to Admiral Vesselago, who was considered somewhat of an expert on American affairs, having participated in the Russian naval demonstration staged in American territorial waters in 1863 as a protest of Emperor Alexander II against British interference in the Civil War. I wanted to know whether it was safe for a boy to walk in the streets of New York without being properly armed.
Half a century later, swapping tales of childhood with my late friend Myron T. Herrick, I was deeply moved by his description of the effect produced in the Middle West by the arrival of the Russian squadron.
“I realize,” Herrick related, “that it must have been the darkest moment in the history of the Union. I was too young to follow the events, but my mother walked around the farm with eyes swollen by constant crying. She had the greatest difficulty in finding laborers, as all the young men had joined the army. One morning, when I played in the back yard, I suddenly heard my mother scream:
“ ‘Myron, Myron, come here quick!’ I rushed to her, thinking that something awful had happened. Standing in the center of the room, with a single sheet of newspaper in her hands, heavy tears of joy streaming down her cheeks, she repeated over and over again: ‘Myron, we are saved.’ The Russians had arrived. ‘Myron, we are saved!’ At that time I knew very little of the nations living outside the United States. There were the perfidious English whom we had to beware of, and there were the French who had written those naughty books so often discussed in the general store; but who were the Russians? ‘Mother,’ I asked, ‘are they anything like the Indians? Do they scalp people?’
“Too bad,” concluded Mr. Herrick, “that you did not run away to America. We would have had lots of things to tell to each other if you had reached Ohio in time to catch me on the farm.”
Beginning with the fall of 1876 the conversation around our dinner-table centered on the imminence of a war with Turkey. All other topics were brushed aside, as everybody realized that our proximity to the Turkish border would force the Caucasian army to act with lightning speed. The visitors from St. Petersburg gave vivid pictures of the atrocities committed by the Turks in the Slavonic states, and several officers on father’s staff had asked his permission to join the Bulgarian army as volunteers.
Our daily military exercises acquired a new significance. We discussed how we should act in case the Turks attempted to attack Tiflis and the palace. We envied the age of our elder brother Nicholas. At eighteen, he would certainly be entitled to join the army and cover himself with glory; we had been taught from infancy that war meant glory. Nobody told us of the casualties suffered by Russia during the Napoleonic and Crimean wars. We knew the names of the generals decorated with the Order of St. George, and we thrilled at the exploits of the heroes who had defended Sebastopol. Our teachers and our books neglected to mention the existence of hospitals, badly in need of bandages, and the heavy toll of human lives exacted by typhoid fever. Death itself was never discussed in our presence. Our reigning forebears never died: they “passed away in peace.”
Around that time a bold murder took place in Tiflis. The two bandits had been promptly caught, court-martialed and condemned to the gallows. Their execution took place on an elevated platform not far from the palace.
Coming down to the classroom, we saw all our tutors gathered in front of the windows in a state of terrific excitement and glaring at something. Instead of ordering us back to our quarters, they made a motion for us to approach the windows. Not realizing what was really happening, we witnessed the gruesome spectacle.
Dense crowds were standing in front of the gallows, looking at the executioner, who was attending to the last preparations.
Then two pale figures appeared and were pushed toward him from behind. A moment later two pairs of stockinged feet swung in the air. I screamed and turned my head away.
“Grand Duke Alexander will never make a good soldier,” said our military tutor sententiously.
I wanted to shriek at him, jump on him, strike him; but a nauseating feeling of sickness kept me paralyzed.
Several days passed before that awful sight left my mind. I walked around as in a dream, not daring to look through the windows lest I should see those two again. I did my lessons and answered the questions put to me, but could not gather my thoughts. It was as though a hurricane had passed over my soul, leaving in its wake the débris of all that had been planted there by three years of study.
CHAPTER THREE
MY FIRST WAR
1
THE month of January, 1877, brought the long awaited declaration of war by Russia on Turkey.
The events of 1877 and 1878 appear thoroughly incomprehensible when analyzed after the passing of fifty-three years: one does not know whether to marvel at the nearsightedness of Disraeli or to deplore the naïveté of the Russian Imperial Government. It may be true that we had no business interfering in Balkan affairs, but then, what mysterious considerations led Lord Beaconsfield to believe in the advisability of provoking the Russian ire? One word from London would have checked the series of massacres of Slavs organized by the Turkish Government, and the most perfunctory effort at reading the future would have disclosed to Downing Street the macabre consequences of fostering any Balkan disturbances whatsoever. As it was, Emperor Alexander II found himself actually in duty bound to accept the British challenge, although opposed to war with all the forces of his kind heart and clear mind.
For nearly two years, while slowly marching through the wild Balkan provinces toward Constantinople, the Russian Army was in reality engaged in a merciless fight with the British Empire. The Turkish soldiers were invariably armed with the newest British rifles; the generals of the Sultan were following the instructions of the British strategists; and the fleet of Her Britannic Majesty made its threatening appearance in the Near Eastern waters just at the moment when the capture of Constantinople by our army was but a question of a few weeks. The Russian diplomats once more lived up to their reputation of unsurpassed stupidity and advised Emperor Alexander II to accept the so-called “friendly services” of Bismarck and to settle the Russo-Turkish differences at a Congress in Berlin.